Create An Epic Fantasy Based Ancient Battleground

At PSDFAN we love helping you to create fantasy outcomes. In today’s detailed tutorial you’ll learn how to photo manipulate a fantasy battleground. You’ll work with cool lighting effects, some serious blending, and matte painting techniques.

Have you ever played a fantasy game or watched a fantasy movie where you see these sprawling epic scenes? You’ve probably asked yourself “Can I create something that awesome?”.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new file. Go to File -> New and input the following attributes.

Leave the background transparent.

Step 2

We will try to create the sky first. Open the Main Sky stock and select the whole picture by using Ctrl + A , copy, paste and resize it to fit with the canvas.

We will desaturate and increase some contrast with these following adjustment layers.
Don’t forget to check the box “Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask” so these adjustment will only be applied to the Main Sky layer.

- Hue/SaturationSaturation : -68Lightness : -17

Curves

And we should get sky that looks like this

Step 3

Open the Left Sky stock photo and select the following part :

Paste the selected part into the canvas, right click on it and choose Transform -> Flip Horizontal to flip the image :

Apply Layer Mask using a big soft brush :

Apply these following adjustment layers :

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -72Contrast : -31

Hue/SaturationSaturation : -75Lightness : -10

And we will have the left part of the sky like this :

Step 4

Open the Right Sky stock photo, use Ctrl + A to select the whole image :

Place it like this on the canvas, set the Blend Mode to Screen :

Apply these following adjustment layers and mask the edges of the photo:

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -91Contrast : -27

Hue/SaturationSaturation : -100Lightness : -14

And we’re basically done with the sky! I recommend you to select all the sky layers and group it by holding Ctrl and select all the layers and use Ctrl + G to group. This should help you manage the layers easier.

Step 5

Now we will create the ground by opening the Main Ground photo and select the following part:

Paste the selected part into the canvas and place it above all Sky layers.

Ctrl + T to turn on Transform tool, right click and select Warp and bend the image like this :

And here’s what we will get :

Step 6

Use Shift + Ctrl + U to quickly desaturate the image, we will use this option a lot in this tutorial.

Apply Brightness/Contrast :Brightness : 16Contrast : 39

We will have our main ground like this :

Step 7

Open the Debris 1 photo and select the following part :

Place it like this :

Use Transform and choose Distort, bend the image down :

Desaturate this part with Shift + Ctrl + U to have it like this :

Apply layer mask around the edge of the image :

Step 8

Apply the following adjustment layers:

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -52Contrast : -50

Level

The debris field will be blended nicely into the ground:

Create a new layer, grab a black soft brush with small size and paint on the debris field like this:

Step 17

Step 18

Now we will use a very interesting technique to adjust the highlight and shadow of an image. Start with a new layer (with Create Clipping Mask on the giant head statue), Ctrl + A to select, right click and choose Fill, choose the option 50% Grey and click OK.

Change the blend mode to Overlay

We will use Dodge Tool to highlight and Burn Tool to darken the image. Set the Strength of both tool at 10%.

Notice the dark part is where I used Burn Tool and the white part is where Dodge Tool is applied. This step will take a while to get into it but will be extremely helpful if you want to highlight or darken images without damaging it, thanks to the 50% grey layer we just created.

And here is the result :

Step 19

We will create shadow for the statue head by duplicate the statue layer and fill it with Black.

Use Distort to bend the shadow like this :

Go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur, Radius 1,5px

Apply Layer Mask on the shadow layer with low opacity soft brush like this

We will have a very subtle shadow!

Step 20

Open the Ancient Ruin photo and extract the tower :

Place it behind the giant statue head, desaturate it.

Apply some adjustment layers to the towerCurves

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -13Contrast : -30

Step 21

Create new layer and paint some black on the tower like this

Change the blend mode to Soft Light, Opacity 100% – Fill 80%

Create another layer and paint more black
Reduce the Opacity to 35% and Fill to 80%

Step 22

Open the Horseman Statue, paste it into the canvas, desaturate then resize it like this :

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -9Contrast : -17

Curves 1

Curves 2

Step 23

We will adjust the shadow & highlight of the Horseman Statue using the same method we did with the Giant Head Statue layer.

The same goes with the shadow :

Apply Layer Mask on the shadow :

Here’s what we have got so far :

Step 24

Open the Broken Arm stock photo and extract the arm :

Place the arm here

Create a shadow layer for it like we just did with Giant Head Statue and Horseman Statue

Layer Mask on shadow layer

This is the result

Step 25

Apply these 2 adjustment layers for the arm

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -8Contrast : -73

Curves

This is what we will get

Step 26

Open the Sword Pack stock and extract this sword :

Place the sword near the broken hand

Apply these adjustment layers over it:

Hue/SaturationSaturation : -61Lightness : -10

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -2Contrast : -45

Level

Step 27

Create the shadow layer for the sword

Apply Layer Mask

Duplicate the sword, flip it horizontally and place it like this

Step 28

Open the St.Angelo Statue stock and extract the statue

Desaturate and place it here

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -70Contrast : -13

Curves

Apply Layer Mask :

Step 29

Create a shadow layer for the St.Angelo statue

Apply Layer Mask

Drop the shadow layer’s Opacity to 50% and Fill to 80%

Here’s what we have got so far

Step 30

Open the Stone Archway stock and extract the archway

Place it near the two statues afar and desaturate it.

Brightness/ContrastBrightness : -52Contrast : 38

Curves

Step 31

Apply Layer Mask on the gate

To this point we have finished putting all objects into our composition, the result so far :

Step 32

Time for some rainy effect! Open the Rainy Brush and select this brush

Create a new layer on top of all layers and start painting the brush all over the canvas like this

Step 41

We will go back to the sky, create a new layer on top of all sky layer (or group if you have grouped all of them into one), paint some black al over the sky except the lens flare area.

Paint the following color on the lens flare area

Change the blend mode of the black color layer to Soft Light with 70% Opacity
Change the blend mode of the blue colors layer to Soft Light with 75% Fill

Create one more layer and paint this area with color #3969bb

Change the blend mode to Color with 30% Opacity and 45% Fill

Step 42

Go back to these main layers and apply some effects in Blending Option.
All used the color #92bad8

Tower

Giant Head Statue

Horseman Statue

Broken Arm

St.Angelo Statue

We will have a subtle blue effect on the edge of the parts that affected by the blue light.

Step 43

We are almost done! Before proceed please save your current Photoshop file and then Flatten Image.
Duplicate the layer and go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur

Layer mask on the dupliated layer with blur effect

The result :

Step 44

Next I will introduce a great way to sharpen the image without damaging it. Flatten the image again, duplicate the layer and go to Filter -> Other -> High Pass

Then change this layer’s blend mode to ‘overlay’.

Apply Layer Mask on the St.Angelo part of the layer

As you can see the whole image has been gradually sharpened but the quality doesn’t reduce!

Step 45

This is the final step! Open the Snow Texture and paste it into the canvas

Change the blend mode to Lighten.

Apply Layer Mask

Congratulations, You’re All Done!

Awesome job making it this far! You should be proud of what you’ve created. Show it off to your friends and colleagues and get some feedback.

You can also comment here with your version, or any questions you had about the techniques used. We love to see what you guys create and we’re always here to give helpful feedback and tips to help you to improve.

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About the Author:

I've been a self-taught Photoshop user since 2010 from Haiphong, Viet Nam. I love all kind of designing but photo manipulation is my main aspect. Catch me up at: http://atknebula.deviantart.com/